When the river floods, just hike up your pants, alright?

Everyone has a dad. Your relationship with him is probably on par with September weather: low 80s one day with a thin drag of clouds, and the next day hovers above 30 with wind that never dies, hail that leaves craters in the roof of your car, and then, just after you can see twenty feet in front of your face, the humidity shoots up, water pools in your yard and chokes the plants. Have fun spending an afternoon uprooting roses and bushes and moving them to the front of your yard.

I'm pushing 23, and it makes my relationship with my dad off-kilter. I'm an adult. I work 40 hours a week. I have a car payment, my own insurance, two loans for school. Half the time, I buy my own food, even though there's a refrigerator filled with food 20 feet from my bedroom. Granted, many of those choices I made myself, but like most, I take after my dad, so I'm stubborn.

Dad's are like that big tree in your backyard. Say you're napping in your room. It's 2:30, no clouds. Sun feels like it's tapping a clenched fist against your window. Still, you're lying in your bed, eyes opened like the top of a can,  and its' dark in your room. That's dad. He's your face, crooked toes, slouched shoulders, unmade bed, dirty pile of laundry. And it's going to take you a long time to figure that out. Hell, it probably took me until I decided to move to Kansas City to understand that.

My dad mixes cereals that, you know, have no business being in the same bowl, but that's why I love him. He's reserved and close-lipped until he has something to say, and I wish I had that quality. I generally can't shut the fuck up. Dad's that Chinese proverb, "Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know." He's why I write. Half the time, I don't know. Writing is a mechanism used to understand the world we live in. Every other tool we have, the news, Internet, conversation, whatever else, it's all crooked. It's all jaunted. Sitting at a computer with a white page or at a desk with a pen that probably doesn't write. It's the only purity you have when you try and understand.

Yesterday I was writing a poem, and I was sitting there convincing myself, "This is what I want to do for a living. I'm going to make it work somehow." Then I started thinking about Father's Day. I wonder when I was born what my dad was thinking when I was lying there. I wonder if parents have notebooks they fill with checklists of what they want their kids to do. Like, I wonder if my dad wanted me to run a company, or a grocery store. I wonder if my dad figured I might turn out gay (didn't) or something else. Date a black chick, run marathons, collect basketball cards (I did do that). I'm not a dad yet, so I don't have a clue.

And I honestly have no idea what he thinks about me now. I've made a lot of mistakes and have done things against his grain. I'm sure there are times when I come home and he wishes I had an answer for half of the things I do, like spend time in my room writing pages of nothing. I don't, though. Just like he probably doesn't have answers to the things he does, other than, "Just because," or "It makes me happy."

That's fine with me. It works for us. Ultimately, that's all that matters, because that's love. Happiness. 

I love you Dad.

**

Uh, so this one is for Dad.